Give it the Finger: Apple’s New Phone Uses Finger Scanning Biometrics
Apple is stepping up the ’biometrics’ game for the personal tech industry and adding a ’Touch ID’ sensor which will scan the phone user’s fingerprints to authenticate their identity. The advance is said to allow users to quickly identify themselves and make online purchases.
While scanning your biological markers for identification purposes sounds dubious and risky, don’t be alarmed - Apple promises that your fingerprints will "never [be] stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud", and thus are safe.
No one will be able to get access to that information.
Because Apple says so. And hackers don’t exist.
And neither does the NSA.
Apple qualified the security argument:
Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio explained in the company’s iPhone 5S presentation video that all fingerprint data will be stored in a “secure enclave” on the device’s A7 processor, where it will be “locked away from everything else, accessible only by the Touch ID sensor.” Source
These claims lose their assurance when juxtaposed with this article showing how the NSA refers To "iPhone Owners As ’Zombies’ And Steve Jobs As ’Big Brother", and how the NSA has access to get all our information at any time, they just choose not to.
The iPhone isn’t alone in this, as demonstrated by der Spiegel’s article "Privacy Scandal: NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data", which includes the ’unhackable, military-level security’ Blackberry.
Your fingerprints and personal data available to anyone with online and surveillance power, abilities, or expertise?
Thumbs down to that.
Red Ice Creations
iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor called Touch ID, recognizes your thumb on the Home button
By Ben Gilbert | EnGaget.com
Apple’s brand-new iPhone 5s isn’t dramatically different from last year’s model, but it has at least one major addition: a "Touch ID" sensor. Us human beings are calling it a fingerprint sensor, and it’s built into the phone’s main Home button below the screen. Apple’s Phil Schiller says, "It reads your fingerprint at an entirely new level" -- it’s 170 microns in thickness with 500 ppi resolution. According to Cupertino, it "scans sub-epidermal skin layers," and can read 360 degrees. As expected, the sensor is actually part of the Home button, making it less of a button and more of a...well, sensor. Using Touch ID, users can authorize purchases in iTunes, the App Store, or in iBooks by simply using their thumbprint (starting in iOS 7, of course). Pretty neat / scary!
As rumored, the sensor uses a laser cut sapphire crystal cover; it retains a tactile input for those wary of the sensor wearing down after lengthy use. The sapphire crystal, acting as a lens, takes a highly detailed image of your fingerprint, which Apple says is "never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud." According to Apple’s official PR on the new phone, Touch ID’s fingerprint info is "encrypted and stored securely in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip" (the A7 chip is the new processor at the heart of the 5s). Apple hasn’t made clear whether Touch ID allows for multiple users on a single iPhone or not, nor has the company said whether you could turn off fingerprint authentication (though we have to presume the answer is yes given previous authentication standards on the iPhone).
The fingerprint ID technology was long rumored as heading to 2013’s iPhone following Apple’s acquisition of Authentec last summer.
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Read the full article at: engaget.com
READ: The FBI and the Myth of the Fingerprint
